UNTIL THE VERY END, only the very best become gods. Nothing else matters.

As her hands grip the edge of the sink like a throat begging to be crushed, Iko glowers at the reflection in the mirror and revels in the memory of the sound skin makes when it tears. The other girls had evacuated the locker room and the showers were emptied. Good for them. They were all younger, all so shiny with misplaced hope, all so talented yet flawed and without potential.

          Iko couldn't recall a day where she'd been among their camaraderie. Even when she'd just started out at the academy, barely seven, first learning how to perfect the snap of her wrist so the blade in her hands could shred a man's heart to ribbons, she'd never seen a point to making friends. Most of her classmates were unpleasant to be around, anyway, and they spoke of glory and pride and puffed their chests out like they were already wearing crowns atop their heads. But none of them were worth their weight in gold. The academy accepted only the best candidates, but Iko's eyes perforated their boasted exteriors, saw past the expensive gear and the condescending masks. Whether it was sloppy footwork or the persistent inability to make simple but life-saving calculations during weapon sparring exercises, none of them were anywhere close to cutting it as perfect career tributes.

           None of them had what it took to be a monster, and ultimately, that'd cost them Iko's respect.

           Cruelty, they wore like a second skin, as did all privileged kids. Intelligence, only a select few of them clung to. Just barely. But cruelty, they exacted in the wrong places.

            When she was ten, already rising the ranks during her third year at the academy, some older kids had been taunting her while she'd been pitted against another kid during a hand-to-hand combat exercise. They'd called her names, but none of them were her own. She thought they weren't worth the effort, but they needed to be taught lessons. Even when she'd won that exercise, almost breaking her opponent's neck in the process, the incorrect names persisted.

            Over the course of a few days, she'd cornered them, one-by-one in the bathrooms and told them, "dogs that bite their masters should be put down. Just the same, if you're too intellectually deficient to learn my name, I'll make sure you'll know it permanently." And held them down, knife in hand, taking her own sweet time carving her name, letter-by-letter, into their arms where everyone could see, I-K-O M-O-R-I-Y-A-M-A, while they screamed and begged and Iko thought that might've been her first taste of monstrosity. They still wore those scars. From then on, each time she cut a cool look across the room towards them, whether intentional or not, they flinched from her until they left the academy for good.

           Monster.

          Greatness was relative, Iko's grandfather used to say. Greatness was bestowed upon those who wished and yearned and prayed. It was different for everyone, he used to say, bitterly. Greatness was what made the world grow round and fat with corruption and evil.

          Of course, he had been a senile old man the last time she'd seen him. The war of the Dark Days had rooted its memory fingers in his hair of murders and taken ahold of him forever. He was dead now, fallen victim to a rampant case of tuberculosis, but before that, he used to say all sorts of things. Most of it had been brushed off as nonsensical rambling by Iko's parents who thought old Grandpa Moriyama was more burden than family. They were the practical sort, clinical and critical and coldblooded (how typical of ex-Career tribute candidates), and that was what was so insufferable about them, Iko supposed. It's what drove her away, and it's what drove them apart.

          But there was something that her grandfather had said before he'd died that'd stuck to Iko ever since. He spoke of greatness like it was a disease, like it was what made the water infected, like it was what made him contract the sickness that'd eaten at his lungs. Every quote about greatness by some literary Shakespearean figure, he'd loathed and sneered at. And so he'd told her once that this world was not categorised in terms of greatness. There was no such thing as God-given greatness. There was supremacy and poverty; there was law and there was chaos.

          People were divided by circumstance. All the world's a stage, all of life's a battle.

          Some people were born into the fight without a choice. There were the orphans of devastating war, drafted soldiers turned into disposable pawns, bone-thin children scavenging the streets for one more meagre meal to last them another eternity. The wilted and the withered, growing sickly under the cruel shade of the top-dogs. They were spat on, snuffed out, turned away from doorsteps. Some grew angry, forced to break from their shackles and tear themselves apart to become stronger. Some were left behind, shellshocked into a catatonic vacancy. Some looked to death like an old friend, waiting for their time to come, huddled under bridges and crumpled paper bags for warmth. Some wasted in the shadows, hidden amongst the trash they'd made a bed of.

          Some people were wired for the fight, crashing down into the heart of a savage revolution—all swinging fists and war-cries tearing from throats, burning up like a comet on a collision course. They hit the ground on all fours, kicking up the dust and quaking the earth. But they're up in a second, howling at the moon, wildfire spirit and blood dripping from their teeth. Those who pushed and pushed and pushed themselves to breaking point; all tapered edges and tongues like whips cracking on splitting skin and mouths filled with vitriol. Devilment lingers like smoke clinging nefariously to the sting of bloodstained leather. People learn not to fight a losing battle; they're the ones who like their parties wild, kill like they're running out of time; own no shred of remorse towards a world that tilts on its axis for them; they like the battered and broken, they're on the straight line to spiritual damnation, they flock with their own kind of ruin. Hardened and cruel, bloodsoaked and hungry. Bred by circumstance for battle.

             There was a time when Iko might've felt that she belonged to the final category; all feral power, some kind of diabolic entity.

          But she wasn't. In truth, she was just another pawn in someone else's sick little game. Nonetheless, a pawn dead-set on making it out alive, no matter the cost. Being born in a Career district that produced the largest pool of victors reaped from previous Hunger Games didn't only mean she had no choice but to play the game; it meant she was expected to want this. It meant that she was predisposed to bloodlust and the inner makings of a natural born predator. From the moment they can walk, children are trained ready for these Games, and sometimes it makes one wonder: are monsters born or created?

          It was why the Capitol turned a blind eye to the training facilities set up around the district, despite any prior preparation for the Games being illegal. Perks of being on the receiving end of preferential treatment. Every child was enrolled in a training academy, meant to gear them towards being a prospective Career Tribute. Two months before the Reaping, all the head trainers in the academies held a meeting to pre-select their most elite students—one boy and one girl, who were, presumably, the most likely amongst hundreds of other students to ensure a victory—who would volunteer to enter the Games. And this year, they'd picked her. Out of a hundred other kids vying for the same opportunity, she was the one they'd chosen.

          To Iko, the academy was halfway to a second home. It was everything she had known since she could walk.

          She remembered coming here for the first time with her mother, aged six and barely passing the minimum age of requirement for enrolment by a day and a half. Remembered how the linoleum felt all too foreign; how the impressively intimidating array of weapons available to train with and get accustomed to glistered beneath the stark, clinical lights so dauntingly; how the older kids paused their intensive sparring just to glare down at her tiny, tiny frame. She had felt so small back then, clutching desperately onto her mother's loveless hand, just a dainty thing with an affinity for scraped knees and roughing up imaginary adversaries with flimsy sticks and smearing backyard mud all over her skin like warpaint.

          But amongst all those kids and teenagers standing by the target practices, unleashing their potential with deadly precision and accuracy, hitting bullseye after bullseye after bullseye, and the ones standing where she stood now, circling each other on the boxing ring and pummelling each other with the intent to not just subdue but kill, she was distinguishably inferior.

          Then she was allowed to select her favourite weapon from the academy's impossibly majestic inventory, the largest display of weapons she'd ever seen. She remembered picking up a pair of shurikens because they looked like stars, the five-pointed blades glinting silver in her tiny palms. That year, she awoke with the cold reality that she wasn't a natural talent that most students were. Her progress had been slow and her assigned mentor had been immensely frustrated with her on multiple occasions. However, she persisted and improved with every session. What she wasn't skilled or gifted at from birth, she made up with frightening diligence.

          Aged nine, she'd mastered throwing shurikens at seventy yards with a frightening accuracy, picked up the short sword (which she was still admittedly weak at since close-range weapons wasn't exactly her area of expertise), and was one of the top few in hand-to-hand combat and other martial arts. Aged ten, she picked up knives. And although a close-range combat weapon was nothing compared to her startlingly lethal efficiency at long-distance weapons, she'd found that knives were not only extremely versatile, but they were her proverbial calling. And at aged eleven, the hilt of any throwing knife found a home in her sure hands, and the shiny silver blades embedded themselves in bullseyes from record-breaking yards away.

          From then, she'd desired to be nothing but the best. Because the basis of the training academy was that if you weren't good enough, you were left to drown. And so she began clawing her way to the top, keeping her head above the water, lashing out at anything in her way, decimating obstacles obstructing her ambitions. Until she came out on top, peering down from the apex of the mountainous list, aged thirteen, the smallest girl with the biggest dreams.

          So here she was now, aged seventeen, the best of the best, perpetually unsatisfied, always thinking of the perfect strategy, the perfect angle for a throw, the perfect manoeuvre to destroy an opponent. Someone had once told her, in passing, that if she ever cracked her skull open on a rock, they wouldn't be surprised to see equations tumbling out of her head instead of brain matter. Greatness was an expectation of her. It didn't matter that she was just a child then, and it certainly didn't matter now, eighteen hours before the Reaping. Twenty hours before the clock started its countdown—to glory or the end of her rope, Iko didn't want to dwell over.

          Either way, she was going into the Games tomorrow, and she was playing to win.

          Nebulous steam clouds the girls' locker room in a sticky humidity, fogging up the mirrors and clinging to her skin. By the time she had arrived, all the stalls had been occupied and she'd been forced to wait until someone cleared out.

          Presently, the locker room is empty. All the other girls had left in a dissonant haze of animated chatter a few minutes earlier. She'd left her things on a bench in the innermost section of the locker room. Nobody bothered with her. Just like she never bothered with them. Once Iko had vacated her own shower stall, having washed off all the blood crusted on her skin but not daring to touch the wound on her split lip—it'd burned, white-hot and stabbing, under the shower spray—she dresses quickly, changing into an extra set of training clothes. For now, she pointedly ignores the throbbing bruises and the screaming knot in her sore shoulder.

          Hair still dripping wet, she's stuffing her soiled clothes back into her duffel bag when someone seizes her shoulder.

          Panic pierces her heart and she whips around, swinging her elbow out. But before she can land a hit, a rough hand wraps around her wrist, another clamps down on her other wrist and pins both her arms to her sides, pushing her up against the wall. Horror convulses her chest and her mind jumps to the worst case scenario. Her spine runs cold as heat radiating off a warm body engulfs her.

          Hit back, her mother's voice commands. Don't panic. A panicked person is a dead person.

          Red flashes across her vision as rage drowns her insides. Hit back, hit back, hit back. Hissing, she struggles against her assailant, but her efforts are futile. Her assailant snorts at her helplessness. Her front meets a firm chest as she bucks and growls like a wolf forced into a muzzle but they only hold on tighter. Then, she lifts her gaze, only to meet a familiar pair of amber-glass eyes glinting wickedly.

          Up close, she could see the veins roping under the other boy's skin—palpable and thrumming with death and all the shiny, silver scars constellating Alexandre Ivanovich's calloused flesh like scintillating crescents. He was a creature of moonlit beauty, a blonde Adonis with a chiselled jaw and a lithe, muscled form (she didn't miss how most people snuck unabashed glances at him every now and then during training); but he was also a viper, just as she was, and no matter what, those creatures were untameable. They were as toxic as their bite.

          She swore viciously.

       "Ooh, potty-mouth," Alex sneers, arching a brow in amusement. A heated flush had crept up her neck and she bristles in irritation, but her heart had ceased its erratic pounding. Relief punctured the tension in her muscles, the fight-or-flight instinct instantly snuffing out like a candle flame.

       "Sneak up on me like that again and I'll cut your throat out," Iko seethes through gritted teeth, annoyance pricking her disdainful tone. His head tips back as he laughs, a vibrant, mirthful sound that resonates in the empty locker room and tunnels through her bones. With a reassuring squeeze, he releases her arms and she shoves him off her without ceremony.

          Since they were kids, Alex had developed an impish predilection for sneaking up on people. Particularly, Iko, who he spent most of his time around. At first, she could always predict when he was coming up behind her, and always managed to react in time. But as the years passed and training for the Games became more of a fixation in their lives, his advances grew stealthier until he was practically soundless in any environment. At some point, he'd learnt how to become invisible in every form of the name. A ghost melting into the shadows. Now, she couldn't even sense him creeping up on her, like a leopard stalking its prey in the prairie. The sole thing about him she truly resented—only because she could never do the same.

          Although, if it had been anyone else who'd put their hands on her like that, they'd get a knife in the gut and a mouth filled with blood. It didn't matter if they'd done it without malice or not. At least Alex had enough practice to know how to avoid her hands.

       "You always fall for it, though," he teases, slumping down on the bench beside her duffel bag, slipping his own backpack off his shoulders and dumping it on the ground at his feet. Clearly, he'd cleaned himself up too, seeing that his blonde hair was slightly damp and there wasn't anymore blood smeared across his tan skin. Just the bruises left, prominent and achingly painful to look at.

          What would it look like, to have the light fade from his eyes? Christ, she couldn't believe she'd thought about her best friend that way. Guilt chipped at her conscience. You could've killed him. She pushes the thought down. No time for the guilt. No time to dwell on thoughts born of momentary fantasising. No time for distractions.

       "You got out of the shower early."

       "Magic," he says, with a theatric flourish of hands. She scowls, knowing it's a cheap dig at her macabre inability to leave the shower until all the hot water cuts off.

       "Shut it," she grumbles, flicking her towel at him. "How did you get into the girls' locker room?"

          Fidgeting with his fingers, Alex shrugs. "Waited for everyone to leave first."

       "Everyone except me?"

       "I wanted to give you this without making a fuss." He pulls something out of his pocket and tosses it at her. She catches it, deftly, and lifts it up to inspect the label. It was a small, metallic pot of antiseptic salve. Furrowing her brows, she twists the cap off and sniffed the green substance in measurable distrust. Lavender scented, too, apparently.

       Surprise flickers across her face, but it's fleeting as she schools her features back into the perfect mask of composure. Always a little bored, always a little condescending, never impressed by effort or talent because she knew none of it would surpass hers.

          His lips pull into a languid smirk as he pats the space beside him. "Sit."

         "Why?"

          He shot her a flat look that might as well have read: are you stupid? "So I can make you look less like you've been chewed up and spat out by a swamp monster? Also—" he procures an ice pack from his bag— "so you can hold the ice while I fix up your busted mouth. Can't have our District Two tribute running around with an infected face during the Reaping tomorrow, can we? I mean, just imagine the camera crews. They'd have a field day with this hot mess."

            "Minerva's waiting."

          "She can wait a few more minutes," he says, exasperated, plucking the antiseptic salve out of her hands. With jerky movements, she takes the ice pack from him, compliantly sinking down in the space on the bench beside him, propping her heels against the edge of the bench and drawing her knees to her chest. Smug, he quirks a brow at her. "See? Wasn't so hard, was it?"

           Iko slants him a frosty look. But she turns her head so he could take her chin in his hand and spread the salve over her split lip. It stings, and she jerks away on reflex, but he clamps his fingers around her jaw firm enough to hold her in place, but not enough for it to hurt.

          "If it stings, it means it's working."

         "You're not my mother. Stop speaking like her," she murmurs, eyes watering slightly. A small glimmer of appreciation surfaces within her. Perhaps he did know her better than she'd thought. Perhaps he'd decidedly selected now, when the facility was deserted save for the two of them, to patch her up because he knew she didn't like publicising her pain. Or even the little intimacies of their friendship. Closeness was weakness. Tears were weakness. Neither were mutually exclusive and there was nothing more she hated than actively showing either.

         "And you sound like a baby," he retorted, smiling despite himself.

           Lifting her hand, she gently presses the ice pack to a particularly nasty bruise on his jaw. A frown tugs at the corners of her mouth as she takes the time to assess the damage. An indecipherable expression crosses his features as he smears more of the salve onto a cut above her eyebrow. For a moment, they work quietly, making quick inventory of the violent blemishes on each others' skin while he takes care of her open wounds and she ices his jaw.

              "I'm sorry about your lip, by the way," he murmurs, swallowing nervously, apprehension scrawled across his eyes as they flicked between her cool gaze and her mouth. "I feel awful."

           "It's fine," she says, shaking her head dismissively. "I'd apologise for the nasty bruise, but you have to admit, it was a pretty solid punch."

           He flicks her on the nose. "Thanks, I hate it."

          At this proximity, it's only now that she notices that he's without a shirt. She wasn't embarrassed about it, honestly, and there was no shame in her blatant staring. They'd seen each other near-naked about a million times before from constantly sneaking out to go swimming in the lake behind Iko's house. But his current state of undress only meant that all his old scars—both from training exercises and random accidents from childhood—were on display. She reaches out to trace a long, ugly scar running down the length of his left arm down to his elbow.

With no one else around, she doesn't automatically school her features into the frosty mask of callous indifference. Around Alex, that mask is cellophane, so she doesn't bother wasting her energy.

           Nostalgia slips a tiny smile onto her lips, and she lets it stay. She was the one who'd etched that scar there after all, a permanent memorabilia that'd cemented their friendship. It'd come from the first time they'd met at the academy and were pitted against each other, eight years old and desperate to make their parents proud. In the end, Alex had won because Iko was scrawny and weak from not having enough to eat, but she'd put up a nasty fight, and surprised him even more by pulling a knife on him. He didn't stay angry at her. There wasn't a single fibre in his body that could hang onto something as dark as hatred. Grudges, even less so. She didn't even think he'd been angry in the first place because he'd laughed, pulled her to his side despite the blood gushing from the gash in his arm, and tugged her towards their parents, earnestly declaring her his new friend.

          He watches her with a level stare now, as she smooths the pad of her index finger against the ridged scar tissue that, despite the decade that'd passed since she'd given him that gash, hadn't faded yet. When she finally drags her softened gaze to his, her smile collapses into a frown. You could've killed him. In that moment, she had wanted to. If it hadn't been for Minerva, she might've crushed his windpipe, could've seen the light drain from his features. Did he know this? Did he know she was nothing but ugly instinct and the hands of a killer? Of course, the latter was common knowledge—every child born into District Two who was raised on the idea of the glory of winning the Hunger Games knew at least fifty-eight different ways to take down a full-grown man. But did he know how close—just a hair's breadth away—she came to becoming one?

          If nobody had stopped her, she could've watched the light fade from his eyes and the world drain of colour soon after. She could've killed him, but she didn't think she could live with herself for doing that. Not to the boy with the amber-glass eyes and a smile that felt like coming home.

           "Why are you still friends with me?" She asks, voice low, and notes to surprise flitting across his expression. What would it look like, to have the light fade from his eyes? A shudder snakes down her spine.

        "Because you're not annoying?"

         "Lex, I'm serious."

          Twisting the lid back on the pot of the antiseptic cream, he appraises her with an intense stare. "So am I. Look, you're not getting rid of me anytime soon, if that's what you're worried about, alright? I'd rather die than voluntarily leave you."

          She narrows her eyes at him. "I'm gonna hold you to that promise. Break it, and I'll break you."

          "Yes, ma'am."

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
iko and alex might be best friends and they might be stupid in love with each other but they won't know that until chapter 183828372737327